No one paid Attention.
I am not left or right leaning, so I don’t have any attachment to what ideology is dominant at one point in time. From what I can tell, maybe the only thing which persuades people are outcomes. The current set of right-wing policies are going to create a lot of discontent because of job losses and wealth inequality, and so that’s an easy target for left-leaning politicians to regain foothold.
Which goes back to my earlier point, politicking only on identity is a losing game. If your only campaign policy is empathy, as necessary as it is for strong social structures, then you will not win votes from those who are facing an existential threat, e.g., via poverty or other fears, as their stress response to their own plight reduces their capacity for empathy. The left needs to learn a lot about humans before it can prioritize humanity.
(Updated the comment to better describe what I mean)
The Democrats offered the "outcome" of a competently-run government. People rejected that. People on the left said that it wasn't enough.
The Democrats could offer a bigger vision. They could find a celebrity who makes big, incoherent promises that will make things worse in the unlikely event they actually get implemented. That's not what I want from a Democratic President, but I'll vote for it over any Republican -- just as the "moderate" Republicans seem perfectly content to put a criminal in office rather than any Democrat.
The trick is that the Republicans paint their identity politics as “helping the poor” by scapegoating all types of other people for the economic misery of the lower income earners. The Democrats don’t have a vision which includes lower income earners to a large extent. I remember most of Kamala’s campaign promises, and they seemed to me to promise more of the same policies which favor upper middle classes.
